Posted
by
msmash
on Wednesday July 13, 2016 @10:02AM
from the other-side-of-the-coin dept.

Peter Kafka, reporting for Recode: Here's the latest salvo in the back and forth between YouTube and the music industry: A report from Google that says its video site's copyright software has allowed content owners to generate $1 billion in the last year or so. Or, in other words: Hey, music guys! Stop moaning about money -- we're making plenty of it for you. Google's formal message comes via "How Google Fights Piracy," a 62-page mega-pamphlet it is releasing today. Google adds that its Content ID tool, which lets copyright owners "claim" their videos that users upload to YouTube so that ad money can be made off it, has garnered $2 billion since 2007. This is Google's response to a growing concern from the music industry that YouTube doesn't pay well, its Content ID isn't a solution, and that the video platform is built on stolen material.

There's a big difference. FM radio, Sirius XM radio, and Pandora don't give the user much control over what is played beyond the genre. Spotify and YouTube, on the other hand, are what 17 USC 114 [copyright.gov] calls "interactive services". An interactive service plays a particular song on demand, which is a much closer substitute for buying a phonorecord* than a radio-style service is. Avoiding the "interactive service" designation is how Pandora can negotiate such lower royalty rates than services like Spotify and YouTu

It would also not be stealing to make a replica car or food dish. Misappropriating IP has several names depending on exactly what you are doing, but none of them is "stealing". And AFAIK, none of them are criminal in the U.S. (they're all civil offenses).It's only theft if the thing being stolen is removed from the person possessing it.

You're "stealing" the money you didn't pay. The word makes sense. Taking-without-paying is stealing. Just as it makes sense to call it "stealing" if you don't pay for a service you consume. Not all theft is equal of course - the losses due to piracy are pretty theoretical, and I don't care much about them, but some money is certainly lost to it.

For those of you who don't understand the big issue, there are two kinds of "owners" for a piece of recorded music - the guy who owns the actual sound recording (master) and the person/people who own the copyright on the underlying work (the writers). These are often not the same people, particularly in commercial music where a record label typically owns the masters.

Writers get paid statutory rates for sound recordings or digital downloads, known as a mechanical royalty rate. For a song that's 5 minutes or less, it's 9.1 cents per copy, with a 1.75 cent/minute increment above 5 minutes. They also get paid for broadcast uses of their works (this is what BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC handle in the US). The issue with Youtube is that there's no good way to pay writers, so they get screwed. Frankly, the labels are getting screwed, too, as $1B isn't a whole lot of money after it's sliced a million ways. I doubt Youtube's ads bring in enough money to pay out more, anyway. ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC pay writers some from Youtube if the song is recognized in the content-id system, but the money is paltry.

Writers are really getting screwed on streaming and Youtube, and while people used to be able to make a decent living as a writer even 10 years ago, it's getting quite difficult now. I have a niece trying to get into the business and I'm telling her she has to perform as well as writing so she can make a good living at it.

For 99.99% of the musicians out there, that's reality. There are literally billions of people in the world who play a musical instrument, or sing, or dance. Hundreds of millions who do so competently. Tens of millions good enough to perform publicly. Of those, how many can actually make a living at it? I know far more people who have a garage band, or do the occasional gig for beer money. I think they enjoy it more as well, because there's

Thanks for the advice. I work on the fringes of the music industry and know plenty of people who make money from it. Few of them "perform". She's very capable and has what it takes, just needs to add "hard work" to what she has. Difficult to say what she'll end up doing.

Why should YouTube have to pay the writers? I used to manage a restaurant and we'd play recorded music for the guests and occasionally had live bands. We'd pay the requisite fees [restaurant.org] to the copyright holders. They own the copyright on the actual sound recording, we use the actual sound recording, we pay them.

If the writers hold a copyright on the lyrics to the song, the place for them to negotiate is with BMI, ASCAP, SESAC before the sound recording is allowed to be distributed. After all, it's using the

Actually that sounds like the issue. Too many hands in the pot. Too many middlemen. However writers and artists allow this to happen for their own profit (or not). Change your business model if it isn't working for you.

The times they are a changin'! (They would probably want royalty for just using that quote) They have been changing for some time now. Trying to use legal machination as your only method of prolonging your business model is not going to work forever.

As are most industries, agencies, people. I remember when webcontent had no ads- then ads created inhouse and coded/placed in tables- then ads served through big business adservers- and now ads injected on top of web pages or tv shows by the ISPs themselves.

Basically, now that the world has gone 'digital' it sure is easier to proliferate money-grabbing techniques across the entire audience. Us.BTW where is my pay raise too!?!

The article you linked is about undisclosed advertisement-like behavior by WB Games. But this has nothing to do with the record industry. Even Warner Bros. Records has nothing to do with WB Games anymore since Time Warner spun off Warner Music in 2004 [wikipedia.org]

My acute senses are alerting me that this may be, in fact, a rhetorical question.

I've noticed since the economic depression circa 2008 people think it is much more acceptable now to just ask you to give them money. For the small town I live in, there are an extrodinary number of panhandlers*. Their proposal is this: you give me money and I'll do nothing in return. That's a pretty good deal for one of us, but it's not me.

* That's the euphamism they prefer to be called now too. It's not like they are panning

They want more money. The Copyright Royalties Board decided that streaming royalties would increase, and small broadcasters' offsets would stop, and that's why Live365 closed. I was a subscriber, my favourite stations moved to different services, and I'm not going to pay each of those services to listen to 1 or 2 stations, so the net result is - artists who were getting a little bit of money from my subscription are now getting nothing.

So she is getting a raw deal from YouTube, causing her to miss hitting the mark of earning 1 million dollar a day.She has also turned feminist because she believes that, as a woman, she has been held back in her career.

if YouTube simply shut down for a week. Just one week. I rather suspect the drop in sales would have those music "industry" fuckers screaming like stuck pigs. Then maybe they'd just STFU about how YouTube is destroying their profitability. In a year or so they'd start bitching again. Lather, rinse, repeat. After a few wash cycles maybe they'd even catch on.

ACtually, no, that's not how copyright works at all. The copyright OWNER is responsible for finding and reporting infringement, the service provider needs to provide some means for the content owner to report and request a take down.
Youtube automatically scans content, flags are copyrighted, then layers ads on it sending the revenue to the content owner, or outright removes the video
Every single asshat "musician" complaining about youtube is doing so because they are attempting to launch their own service and it sucks.

In fact, Google outright removes just about anything any company complains about, whether the infringement is real or not, thereby depriving thousands if not hundreds of thousands independent artists ad revenue or just removing personal videos with bird noise in the background.

Actually no, that IS how it works. It isn't up to the copyright owners to monitor every video sharing site or search through Youtube. It is the responsibility of the site that is providing the service to make sure they arent SERVING copyrighted content they haven't licensed it. That is what the PRO-IP act was for.

WTF are you smoking? The PRO-IP act did nothing to remove the safe harbor provisions for site owners, which was established in the DMCA. It increased infringement penalties and allowed the DoJ to proactively go after infringers, rather than relying on copyright owners to initiate action, but nowhere did it do anything to require site owners to police content.

You apparently think site owners should be responsible for policing user-posted content, which is fine for you, but that's not what the law says, and

Are you claiming that YouTube ought to require each uploader to provide evidence that he owns copyright in the video (or has an appropriate license from its copyright owner) and that it is not an unlawful derivative work? If so, what steps would an uploader need to take to provide this evidence?

The article states that YouTube already reviews each uploaded video by machine to ensure that it is not an unlawful derivative of a work owned by a user of the "Content ID" staydown system. Are you claiming that YouT

YouTube need to reign in their ContentID system because it's stealing money from the content creators, i.e. the people making the videos. The false positive rate is insane, and the moment it decides a video uses some bit of content all the revenue gets siphoned off and can never be recovered, even when the mistake is corrected.

Content producers are resorting to deliberately including some copyright material at the end, from a company that doesn't allow commercial use such as Nintendo. Just a few seconds of Mario, say. Then Nintendo flags the video as "no monetization", which blocks all the other arseholes trying to leech off if. Unfortunately it also means that the video owner can't get paid either, so it's a choice between being robbed or working for free.

Google has at least made some minimal progress towards making the system less abusive to content creators. From what I hear, you can actually get your money back if you counterclaim successfully.

What Google needs to add is a more automated system for movie and game reviewers to counterclaim. Being a reviewer isn't a "get out of copyright free" card, and it's not like YouTube can ignore the claims, but they can make it easy for e.g. a movie reviewer to counterclaim fair use by checking a couple of boxes.

I agree with your premise but the issue is scale. The reason Content ID exists is because Youtube can't possibly manually review everything. Unfortunately the reverse is also true -- they can't possibly manually review every single counterclaim either if they made the counterclaim process easy enough that everyone Content ID screws can potentially counterclaim.

I don't really have a solution (and I'm sure the people at Google trying to find a solution are much better suited to the job than I am, and they s

It's not YouTube's job to review *anything*. The DMCA obligates them to take down content when they get a claim, and to put the content back up when their is a counter claim. That's it. The Content ID system actually works outside of any legal requirement.

They would have to review the claims. Content ID is a measure to help avoid being directly sent 150,000 claims every day by (attempting to) beat the claimants to the punch.

Is it "fair"? Of course not. But its essentially necessary to do this in an automated way at some level. You could argue that it should be the content owners that write some equivalent of Content ID but then Google is stuck in a position where:a) They're getting dozens of individual formats from each owner's system which is a pain in

The powerful media companies in Hollywood have shown great results earlier. For instance, the White House threatened Russia trading with raised toll fees, unless Russia shut down an illegal MP3 site. Which Russia did. In Sweden the PirateBay was attacked by the government, in fact there are wikileaks diplomat mails proving this (site in swedish http://falkvinge.net/2010/12/2... [falkvinge.net] ) that every new swedish law/investigation about "fighting terrorists" was in fact, commanded by the powerful media industry in Hol

Are you claiming that YouTube ought to require each uploader to provide evidence that he owns copyright in the video (or has an appropriate license from its copyright owner) and that it is not an unlawful derivative work? If so, what steps would an uploader need to take to provide this evidence?

The short answer, for those who don't understand how copyright works, is that it would be literally impossible for Google to require such evidence, because in most cases there isn't any. Copyright is automatic. For you to own the copyright on your own creative works, you are required to do literally nothing.

For you to own the copyright on your own creative works, you are required to do literally nothing.

This is true except in one case: "protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully." (17 USC 103(a) [copyright.gov]) When George Harrison wrote the song "My Sweet Lord" [wikipedia.org], he unwittingly "used unlawfully" a portion of the song "He's So Fine" written by Ronald Mack and lost a million dollar lawsuit over it [wikipedia.org]. Another way in which a work can be accidentally "used unlawfully" is a claim of fair use pursuant to s

When road construction and maintenance firms start being responsible for the crime that happens on their roads,when car manufacturers start being responsible for the crime being perpetrated with their cars,when the HDD manufacturers start being responsible for what their HDDs are being used for,and so on and so on,that's when your stupid incoherent and unrealistic argument will start being legitimate.Till then, your statement has no legitimacy.

For the most part the state owns the roads and sub's out the construction and maintenance (some times with kick backs). Any ways it's like saying that the sate is responsible for the crime that happens when there is no cop there to stop it.

Youtube has been annoying about the automatic revenue transfer away from small publishers too. I recently had my Youtube revenue transferred to a big recording label. The offending music in my video was one of Youtube's own royalty free music tracks. In addition, the link to file a complaint was broken, so I simply removed the audio and the situation

ACtually, no, that's not how copyright works at all. The copyright OWNER is responsible for finding and reporting infringement, the service provider needs to provide some means for the content owner to report and request a take down. Youtube automatically scans content, flags are copyrighted, then layers ads on it sending the revenue to the content owner, or outright removes the video. Every single asshat "musician" complaining about youtube is doing so because they are attempting to launch their own service and it sucks.

Yahh, no. Courts have already spoken in other cases about this. When you are operating a whack-a-mole operation pretending to observe DMCA requirements, all the while knowing you have copyrighted material on your service, in fact depending on that material for your profits, then it is your (the service provider) responsibility.

That Google hasn't been hit harder over their YouTube operation is in large part because they have the money for a lot of lawyers.

Every time google redistributes material without having a license from the copyright holder, they are violating copyright. Doesn't matter who uploaded it (they are in the same boat, but not nearly as much as google in terms of the number of infringements).

Register the work (video, book, other creative work) and you are allowed to sue for up to $150,000 per individual infringement. No need to give notice, same as the RIAA doesn't have to give anyone a notice before suing them. The DMCA notice and notice pro

In the same sense that 95.6% of the world isn't under the finger of the RIAA either though. Someone in Argentina posting a Taylor Swift video to Youtube will have it taken down under a DMCA claim just as fast as someone in the US will. Because Youtube is governed by DMCA law and has to deal with the RIAA.

And its already enough of a hassle trying to deal with takedowns without trying to do it by geolocation (which would then require geolocking which would then turn into Netflix-style VPN blocking attempts

Who says they have to post it to youtube? Besides, my point, which you ignore, is that the DMCA is not a get out of jail card for distributing other people's copyright materials. Especially since google has a presence in many countries where the DMCA means shit, but copyright law is still the law.

If YouTube were to spend some of its billions on hiring you to solve the problem, how would you go about it? As soon as you specify a practical method of doing so, it'll become practical for the U.S. Congress to add a staydown clause to the OCILLA (17 USC 512).

Well of course, infringement is not what it is all about. That is a lie put out by the publishers. The problem is old content competing with new content, they want to bury the old content, so they can charge a premium for new content and of course pay fuck all for that new content, just like the old days. So they attack all over the place and want infinite copyright and infinite patents and the right for corporations to be able to print their own cash when ever they feel like, which is of course what they do via the US Fed, they just want the sole right to do that globally. Everything from them is double speak and lies.

They don't give a fuck how much you tube makes or how much it pays, they want you tube dead because it keeps to much old content alive and produces way too much new content. For me the most annoying thing about you tube is not being able to block content you have no interest in, and guess who that content is I would most like to block and pretend it doesn't even exist, the lame types like the biebers and taylors of this world, not interested in the PR bullshit marketing. It is high time you tube allowed the rest of us to block content and let's see the reality of who gets the most blocks. Who is really unpopular because blocks are the most accurate measure of all and not likes. Just plain disinterested please do not show me this shit any more on the you tube home page, make it worth while to log in. You bet main stream publishers and the shit content will end up being buried the deepest. We'll be happy and they'll be happy, when their content is buried beyond end user blocks, well, of course they will be extremely unhappy to have their content blocked but, meh, fuck em.

It's also about "corporate content" versus "user created content." If users are able to create good enough content by themselves, that might reduce demand for corporate produced content. So if you can find some very minor copyright concern in the user uploaded content (there's 5 seconds of music playing from someone walking by in the background), you can knock these "competitors" offline and push more of your corporate produced content.

No it won't. Especially in the realm of music, there's thousands of great musicians out there. The problem is that nobody's ever heard of them.

The music "industry" isn't about making music so much as its about advertising music -- expensive music videos and massive stage shows and radio time and whatever else. Very little of that is available to your average garage band no matter how good their music happens to be.

Movies and video games are a different story because they legitimately require big budgets

It's youtube, if you everyone starts blocking undesirable content the hidden content will start to peek out and spread, should people decide to spread it via, word of video. It's not fast but once end users have much better control of the content that floods their home space, those garage bands will come through, being able to block crap your not interested will clear the fog of content and new light will shine through. The little guy and gal, getting a chance to break through is all about people being abl

That's all fine and good except the majority of people are NOT sick of the "corporate" content. If they were, they'd have already stopped buying it and the content would change.

The RIAA and friends might fight tooth and nail against changing their business model, but they've got no qualms about changing the style of musicians they hire as tastes change -- that's already part of the business model and has happened dozens of times over the years.

The billions aren't going to YouTube. They're being paid out to the content holders, the people complaining. Or are you suggesting that youtube stop paying the content holders to build a monitoring system that can monitor 100% of user submissions, which is about 5 million hours of video ever day?

Do you think that Google operates youtube as a charity? They knew about the copyright problems before they bought it, and figured "screw it - we're big enough to get away with it." Sort of how banks are too big to fail.

If they can't get a valid license to redistribute, then they shouldn't do it. Same as the Pirate Bay, MegaUpload, etc.

Google has absolutely no obligation to police any other party's copyrights, and the web would be a poorer place if they did.

A copyright is your own private monopoly on a piece of content. It is a granted right, and something of a legal fiction: we have collectively agreed to treat this non-scarce good as if it were scarce, to serve an economic purpose. We, collectively and severally, have no further obligations to you. Neither Google nor any other third party is responsible for your private property, absent a specific agreement to that effect. The DMCA makes no provisions that Google do anything more to protect your property than [a] not to block tools used to detect infringement and [b] to respond expeditiously to takedown requests. ContentID is a wholly voluntary program, whose primary purpose is to reduce the number of DMCA requests they have to process.

Forcing Google to police all content submitted would not only be contrary to centuries of jurisprudence, but it would probably kill off user-submitted content entirely. In point of fact, there's not been any clear ideas proposed on how exactly to do so, because the content industry knows very well that their position is legally indefensible. It's not like they have had any issues buying favorable legislation before, after all. This is a public campaign and not a K street one because they don't want a change in law, they just want more money. This is a shakedown, pure and simple.

You are wrong. I don't really care if you like copyright or not, but they are responsible for serving copyrighted content. "Centuries of jurisprudence" is a joke.

Presumably you meant "infringing content". Despite your eloquent and well researched rebuttal, it's very clear you have a motivated misunderstanding of copyright. Given your passion for this argument and your inability to support it, I would advise you to keep arguing in the exact same way: you're doing wonderful work for the opposite side.

You are wrong. I don't really care if you like copyright or not, but they are responsible for serving copyrighted content. "Centuries of jurisprudence" is a joke.

Do you happen to have an example of case law which disputes his claims? The Viacom case in the US, GEMA case in Germany, and TF1 case in France all have held up that Youtube is not responsible for policing copyrighted content other than providing a reasonably expedited take down process.

The only caveat I know of is Youtube may be responsible if it willfully ignored its own knowledge that content was copyrighted. As machine learning becomes more capable of identifying video content, Youtube may become requir

Full BS. If I create some content, it belongs me and not you, plain and simple. Just as if you buy a car, it belongs to you, not someone else. The only role government plays is ensuring, the content owner retains ownership. It's not legal fiction.

You clearly have no idea what copyright is. You would have a stronger claim if you suggested some sort of inherent right to attribution, but in the words of Jefferson:

Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is

"Full BS. If I create some content, it belongs me and not you, plain and simple. Just as if you buy a car, it belongs to you, not someone else. The only role government plays is ensuring, the content owner retains ownership. It's not legal fiction."

Where did you get the thought that you can OWN an idea? DO you understand how fucking stupid that is as we sit in the middle of an Information Age? You are petty and small and standing on the shoulders of giants. Learn to see the world past your own nose.

Great idea... let's also make the phone company responsible for what everyone talks about on the phone. I can't really tell if you're a troll, shill or just retarded but there's nothing wrong with Google's business model. If they manage to choke Google, it'll be the end of user supplied content as we know it - as was the point all along. How long do you think it'll take/. editors to review every comment in case somebody posted something copyrighted without permission? Particularly when there's no centraliz

Looks like Google made about 6 billion dollars on Youtube last year, so something like 17% of what they make goes to the people whose actual content is being played.
(Reference: http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com] ).

Of course, the people who write and perform got only a tiny fraction of that. They'd probably prefer a model where they actually get paid, instead of google giving away their performances for free and then raking off a few cents for advertising, of which the performers get a fraction.

You see, copyright relies upon PERMISSION. So even if I upload a "leaked' video that looks completely pirated to an outsider, if I have permission from the copyright holder, it's legal.

This requires that A. the entity that you claim to be the copyright owner is in fact the copyright owner, and that B. the permission that you claim to exist actually exists. I think 110010001000 is trying to suggest to research some way to represent proof of A and B, and that YouTube and other sites accepting user-uploaded works should have finished this research before accepting even the first upload.

There is some validity to what you are saying, and many people would agree. While they are at it, they should have to responsibility of removing unwanted videos on people with bad thoughts. Those people who think and look differently should not be allowed on the the platform either. No content should be posted unless it meets certain criteria. Some people call that censorship. We call it keeping the peace by controlling the masses.

People always say "Well Google can't monitor EVERYTHING on youtube! There are too many videos to find all the infringing ones!" Well guess what: that isn't the copyright holders problem. If your business model is such that you can't monitor everything, then YOU NEED TO FIX your business model. Spend some of those billions in cash and hire 50,000 people to monitor video submissions. It can be done, but Google just wants the cash with minimal expenditure.

EXCUUUUUSE ME!! But isn't that what being a disruptive force in the market is all about, ignoring the rules, regulations, laws, etc. through automation? Hire 50,000 people? That is SOOOO last century!!!

If your business model is such that you can't monitor everything, then YOU NEED TO FIX your business model.

Just to be absolutely clear: Are you referring to requirements under current copyright law, or are you suggesting changing the law? If the former, then what invalidates YouTube's defense under OCILLA (17 USC 512)? Citation please.